When Interviewing for a .NET Position, You Should Know the Difference Between an Object and a Class

Sean, a fellow Magenic employee, blogs about his recent interviewing experiences. I've run into some similar situations this past week or so where candidates would claim to know .NET and related technologies, but couldn't describe for the life of them what the difference is between an object and a class, or what the 3 classic attributes are for an OO language (encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphyism). I don't expect a candidate to know everything there is to know about computer languages as I feel like I'm really in the dark sometimes as a developer, but in this day and age, saying you know .NET means you know OO fundamentals. There's a ton of people that I know that know a hell of a lot more than what I do (just ask me a question about BNF and I'll gaze silently at you for a long, long time ;) ), but if you can't speak intelligently about the core OO concepts when I'm interviewing you...sorry, but game over.